In light of the Jimmy Savile scandals, I remembered that back in the 1970s, when I was a teenager and Jimmy Savile was apparently doing his thing, young girls falling for and having affairs with older men really wasn't considered anything unusual or even frowned upon. In fact, at least in the circles I moved, it was the ambition of many young girls to find themselves what we used to call a "Sugar Daddy".

Of course, this can't be compared with Jimmy's activities, and I was never a fan of the chap anyway. But back then, it was simply a different time and people looked at many things of this nature in a different way.

This is a story I wrote as a chapter in my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Fund", which tells a little bit of a story of one girl and her Sugar Daddy.

Flambeaux 

Sunday May 2nd, 1976 

We’re pretty sure that Simon Lyons is Yu Lin’s Sugar Daddy. Ashley and I plan to acquire at least one Sugar Daddy. We’re just not quite too sure how to go about it.

Ashley, Tessa and I are so sure about this because Simon Lyons picks her up in a dark blue Ferrari every day after school, and sometimes in the lunch hour. That’s a Ferrari! And she also told me that sometimes she visits him before she comes to school. So sometimes she comes in late to Assembly. Simon Lyons is a diamond dealer who lives in the town and also owns a restaurant, which is called the Flambeaux. He is a friend of the family, she says. But the thing is, he is obviously very rich and very keen on Yu Lin and she is of course very beautiful. Apart from that, he is 35 and Yu Lin is only 17! And she has been seeing him since she was 16. So why would he be spending so much time on her if he were just a friend of the family!

Anyway, Ashley and Tessa and I asked her about it but Yu Lin just continues to maintain that he is a family friend.

One day, a while ago, I had a row with Ashley. It was really stupid, and it only lasted one day. Ashley and I have been friends for years, and we had never ever had a row before. But we just got cross with each other about one small thing, and then I went into the cloakroom at lunchtime and hid in amongst the coats, and just cried to myself. And then Yu Lin came in to the cloakroom, because she was getting dressed to go out. And she found me hiding on a bench between a few coats.

“Oh, Lizzie, what are you doing here?” Yu Lin asked.

I just mumbled something about being miserable because I’d had a row with Ashley.

Yu Lin put on her hat and coat. “Do you want to come to lunch with me?” she said. “I’m going down to see Simon Lyons.”